Don’t Shoot the Messenger

We’ve just had occasion to change the way part of Palomar’s Blackboard Learn system functions, so I wanted to explain why the system is behaving the way it now is.

If you’ve posted an Announcement in the new Blackboard system, you’ve likely seen that check box for “Override User Notification Settings” where previous versions had a “Send Email” box. (I don’t propose to go into the reasons for that change; if you’re curious then feel free to get in touch with me via email.) If you check that box, when you post your announcement in the course a notice gets sent to all your students telling them that there is an announcement in your course they should look at. If you do not check that box, students would not receive such a notice.

Woah, “would not”? Is that what changed?

Yes. The new behavior in our Blackboard system is for students to receive a nightly notice (called a Digest Notification, sent around 11 PM) about ALL announcements made in their courses.

Functionally what this means is if you post five announcements during the day, but only one of them you check the “Override User Notification Settings” box, your students would receive two notices. One would be about just the announcement where you checked the box which would go out immediately, the other would be about the rest sent near the end of the day.

I could go into a long-winded explanation about exactly why we had to change the system behavior, (short answer: to work around a bug) but I’ll spare everyone that confusion. Bottom line, more notices are now going out to students about announcements than ever before.